As a huge fan of the Metal Slug series from the arcades back in the day, which I’ve generally been able to also enjoy on Switch this generation, I was ecstatic when they announced some new games that would use the franchise’s signature assets and style in new ways. Unfortunately, at least in my mind, the initial strategic offering a few months ago, Metal Slug Attack Reloaded, really didn’t do it for me. While it got off to a decent initial start, and looked great, it quickly got to be more frustrating than entertaining.

Given that I enjoy a well-made tactical strategy title, I was more drawn to the promise of Tactics, and its inclusion of roguelike elements to boot was generally speaking my language. That said, when I checked out the demo of it during a Steam Next Fest I was torn. The production design was incredible, and really pulled me into the Metal Slug vibe, but I wasn’t quite as sold on the general play. At the time I was really hoping that whatever had me in a funk about it would get ironed out by release, but now playing it I can’t say that’s quite the case.

There are absolutely things here that work. The Synchronization element, in particular, is smart and keeps you looking for opportunities to use it. If you have an ally close by, who also has an enemy you’re attacking within their area of fire they’ll also attack, increasing your damage potential on a single attack and helping you to try to overcome the fact that most of the time you feel quite outnumbered by your enemies. The thing is, once you’re able to get a foothold, and begin to grasp how aggressively (but wisely) you’ll need to play in order to succeed, the game can be quite a bit of fun, but the path to get there won’t be for the weary. In that regard the roguelike aspect feels poorly used, at least in having variability before you’ve gotten any real taste of success. There’s always a grinding element before you feel like you’re dialed in with roguelikes, but here the curve feels particularly steep in getting started.

While I would love to say that it’s an obvious win for fans of the series and of tactical strategy games alike, the best I can say is that this feels like an acquired taste. If you have the patience to let everything fall into place, slowly developing an understanding for how to be successful, it can be a good time. A key obstacle to that though is that overall the game does a middling job at best of helping you get up to speed, and there are times when I appreciated the fact that the interface was trying to tell me something visually but I really couldn’t understand what it meant. Perhaps I was just being dense, but it was frustrating to see glimpses of the fun game this could be, but never quite feeling like it was fully coming into focus.